Fish or cut bait

Time is running out on efforts to securely block Asian carp from Lake Michigan

Time is running out on efforts to block Asian carp from Lake Michigan.

For Chicago business interests, something about the Asian carp problem is starting to stink.

During the past 10 years, science and politics have each played a role in the battle to keep the voracious fish from moving through Chicago waterways into Lake Michigan, where they would threaten to devour the fish population of the entire Great Lakes.

Lately, politics has become the driving force. Although research on dozens of options is still under way, a bipartisan group of Great Lakes lawmakers recently pushed through a bill backed by environmental groups to cut short years of planned studies and gave the Army Corps of Engineers an 18-month deadline to find a permanent way to block Asian carp. Furthermore, Congress gave the corps a green light to start planning a physical separation of Chicago waterways and Lake Michigan, the most economically disruptive alternative for the city.

That's a huge boost for environmental groups and many Midwest politicians who have made physical separation their goal despite deep concerns about its potential to disrupt recreational and commercial boating and increase the likelihood of flooding problems; also of concern is what sending Chicago's waste and storm runoff back to the lake would do to the region's drinking water.

Depending on where the cutoff points are, separation is estimated to cost between $3.25 billion and $9.50 billion, according to a report this year by the Great Lakes Commission, a multistate public agency on water resource issues. But other experts say total costs likely would be far higher.

“Re-reversing the river would be easier if we hadn't built a city here,” says Kay Whitlock, a vice president at Christopher B. Burke Engineering Ltd., a civil engineering firm in Rosemont. “Now, this is the system we have. We need to be realistic about it.”

She chairs a task force of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which is studying the costs and ramifications of such a move because those concerns are “kind of being broad-brushed away,” she says. “It seems troubling the Corps of Engineers is under a lot of pressure to short-circuit the work.”

The urgency behind the legislation stems from evidence of genetic material that suggests Asian carp may be getting past electric barriers erected by the federal government during the last decade in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the most direct route between the Illinois River, where the fish are proliferating, and Lake Michigan.

“The strongest hypothesis is that there's at least some live Asian carp swimming around,” says Thom Cmar, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based environmental group. “We don't have the luxury of time here. No fish can swim through a concrete wall; that's why separation is so appealing.”

But it's only a hypothesis. In May, the barriers suffered a 13-minute power outage during a storm before generators kicked in. Earlier this month, more environmental DNA, or eDNA, from Asian carp—not an egg or a fish scale, but microscopic bits of genetic material—was detected past the barriers in Lake Calumet on the Far South Side, triggering an intense, three-day fishing operation. More than 6,000 fish were caught, but not one Asian carp.

“We've fished the snot out of this lake,” says Kelly Baerwaldt, eDNA program manager for the corps. “As scientists we have a responsibility to answer what else could it be.”

The corps is studying whether carp eDNA is dropped by birds or brought in by boats or barges. One theory is that ice from open-air fish markets in Chinatown melts into the Chicago sewer system and eventually flows into Lake Calumet. “It's a giant puzzle,” she adds.

But Asian carp eDNA also was found this month in Lake Erie, raising doubts about whether a costly physical separation of the Chicago pathway would keep all the fish out. The corps has identified more than a dozen rivers outside the Chicago area that could transport Asian carp into the Great Lakes.

With three electric barriers in place, and 2,000 gallons of rotenone fish poison stockpiled nearby in case they temporarily fail, Chicago waterways are “a virtual Fort Knox compared to the other potential pathways,” says Mark Biel, executive director of the Chemical Industry Council of Illinois and head of a business coalition opposed to separation.

Note: The location of the Natural Resources Defense Council's headquarters has been corrected.

quote|Kay Whitlock,Christopher B. Burke Engineering Ltd.

' Re-reversing the river would be easier if we hadn't built a city here. Now, this is the system we have.'